1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a medicine feeder for storing tablets, capsules or other solid-type medicines by the kind and dispensing these medicines one by one in predetermined numbers based on prescription information. The invention also relates to a medicine dispenser including a plurality of the medicine feeders.
2. Description of the Related Art
A dispenser of solid medicines (hereinafter simply called “tablet(s)”), includes a predetermined number of cassette-type medicine feeders for dispensing tablets one by one. In the medicine feeder, a medicine storage has a bottom provided with a rotor. The rotor has an outer circumferential surface formed with a large number of pockets, and as the rotor rotates, tablets in the medicine storage are dispensed one by one from a dispensing spout (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-289506).
In this dispensing process in the medicine dispenser, there are cases where a tablet becomes jammed resulting in seizing and disabling of the rotor due to a trouble caused by, for example, the shape of the tablet or the tablet's attitude at the time of entering the pocket in the outer circumference of the rotor.
When jamming of a tablet is detected, the state of clogging can be cleared by a known method: Upon detection of an overcurrent to a DC motor which drives the rotor, a determination is made that the motor has been locked by a jammed tablet and the motor is driven in a reverse direction momentarily (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-103404).
Another known method is counting the quantity of tablets being dispensed and reversing the rotor momentarily upon a determination that the counting within a predetermined period of time gives a smaller number than predetermined due to a jammed tablet (Japanese Patent No. 3895989).
In whichever of the cases, reverse rotation of the rotor is achieved by inverting the polarity of electric current supplied to the motor.